S2 Ep17: Episode 17: Bridging the Atlantic with Strategy and Data

University Registrars Talking About Stuff

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This edition of the podcast features, for the first time, two non-Registrars (of which I am of course now one). The foremost of the pair of us though is Olivia Kew-Fickus, Chief Data Officer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. We begin by learning about Olivia's highly valued and extremely transferable history degree and then her move into UK higher ed leading to a series of roles at the University of Birmingham.

After six years as Director of Strategic Planning at Birmingham Olivia returned to the US for a different kind of planning role and then after a couple of years became Chief Data Officer at Vanderbilt. Apart from learning a slightly different higher ed vocabulary she has worked hard to bridge across the technical data issues and the strategic level matters.

Rankings are a big issue for Olivia and her university at present - whilst Vanderbilt does well in domestic rankings there is real concern about the dubious nature of the methodologies used and the sketchiness of sector data employed. Vanderbilt commissioned a study by a Chicago research unit, NORC, into the issues with ranking methods to inform an exciting new project Olivia is involved in. (You can see the report from NORC here - https://www.norc.org/content/dam/norc-org/pdf2024/college-rankings-review.pdf )

Finally, Olivia reminds us that, whilst universities can be seen as small towns with everything that entails, they also have challenges that few can anticipate. It's a really interesting conversation (in which I over-use, legitimately, the word fascinating) and I hope you enjoy it. I'm sure all in higher ed will also want to celebrate Olivia's achievement in being shortlisted to be Chief Data Officer of the year!

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